"All in the Family"

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“This is the kind of girl you would seriously take out on a date” says Vinny approvingly of a potential conquest on tonight’s super-not-terribly-special episode of Jersey Shore. For Vinny and his oversexed ilk, this is the highest possible compliment anyone can get. It’s just a step short of deeming a girlfriend wife material.

For in the world of Jersey Shore, dating apparently does not exist. Most of the women that Vinny, DJ Pauly D and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino exchange bodily fluids and venereal diseases with apparently fall into the “kind of girl you want to immediately ditch after she gives you a blowjob in the bathroom of a trashy nightclub” category. Not this woman, though. Vinny’s true love was the kind of girl of dreamgirl he actually felt obligated to treat almost like a human being.

Yes, there are only two kinds of girls on Jersey Shore, as far as the fellas (and for that matter ladies) are concerned: there are symbolic virgins, like Vinny’s saintly mama and the “rarest roses” Vinny and DJ Pauly D planned to take out on a (gasp) date. Everyone else, it’s safe to assume, falls into the whore category.

This is especially true of Angelina, who got it from all sides today, and that’s not some sort of crude sexual innuendo. “Hypocritical whore”, “The Staten Island dump” and just plain “whore” were some of the epithets hurled in Angelina’s direction after she had sex with house enemy Vinny but refused to give up what academics refer to as the “nappy dugout” to the nice chump who famously gave her a Fossil watch and consequently is entitled to a lifetime of hot sex.

Of course everyone in the house is a goddamn whore. In the past, the show has undercut its raging, pathological, almost unbearable misogyny by depicting its male stars as sluts and tramps as well. Everyone comes off poorly; not just the girls. But no one seemed to hold Vinny’s indiscretion with Angelina against him. Once again, hooking up makes a girl a whore and a guy a stud. Hell, in Ronnie’s eyes, it made him something more than that: the “gentlemen” agree that if a man treats a woman like shit he owns and can control her. Let that marinate in your mind a little, dear reader. How fucked up is that statement? How much loathsome misanthropy does it betray?

In tonight’s episode of the He Man Woman Haters Club Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino grew belligerent and hostile when one of Pauly D’s hook-ups didn’t have a non-grenade friend for him to have casual sex with, then forget about forever. He expressed his displeasure by casually noshing while watching Pauly D have sex. Remarkably, this scene marks only the sixth or seventh most homoerotic moment in their friendship.

And Angelina’s nice guy boyfriend (though Jeffrey fucking Dahmer probably qualifies as a nice guy by comparison to the housemates) discovers that Angelina hooked up with Vinny and is none too happy about it and Vinny creepy uncle showed up to say inappropriate things and leer at the housemates' cleavage.

The first two-thirds of the episode were devoted to illustrating why the entire cast is beneath contempt. In the final third, the show tried to win sympathy for Vinny when he’s stood up by a woman he uncharacteristically viewed as something more than a receptacle for his baby batter. The editors tried to tug at the old heartstrings as Vinny sat there frowny-faced and alone. All I could think was that when a woman treats a guy like shit, she fucking owns him. Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it there, Vinny boy?

Stray Observations—

—What exactly was Mike "The Situation" trying to do that pissed off his hook-up so profoundly?

—"I’m a good guy, every woman knows that." No you're not, Vinny. You're an asshole who sometimes does a passable impersonation of a good guy.

—"She has an unbelievable ass that you read about and nice boobies." Pauly D wasn't exaggerating; I read about his date's posterior recently in "The Economist"